DEATH IN SPRING

i went back to st. mary's cathedral of the immaculate conception because i left my book on the right back pew. the church lady who was delegated the task of entertaining me in the vestibule while the man who met me there went to fetch my friend's library copy of death in spring was disappointed: her curiosity had been piqued and she'd planned to take the book home, read it and then return it to the library herself. i took the book back -- i hadn't finished it myself -- and wondered if it wasn't just the title that had interested the church lady given the coincidence of the holy day and the service we'd both just attended.

good friday services are the only catholic masses that i'll allow myself to attend. because jesus dies on good friday, the church doesn't distribute his body or blood until the resurrection on easter morning. good friday and the following (holy) saturday are the only two days of the catholic calendar on which communion isn't given, so, unless you're one of the mortally infirm, it's impossible to be saved by the sacrament on either of those two days. christ became the martyr exemplar on good friday, and each year his holy church on earth gives the faithful that day to bask in their baptismal birthright. we're all martyrs on good friday, genuflecting in the sanctuary at each station of the cross with the knowledge that an act of god that day might mean eternal death. that's any day, of course, for those of us who have lapsed, but on good friday we get to share the ironic vanity of certain martyrdom with the rest of the congregation. and the rest of the congregation they sniff us out, the ones who go to mass only on that one day so as to avoid the shame of refusing communion, and they avoid us in the pews. they sniff us out and avoid us as if we really did smell, which i probably did today when i sat down at the right back pew of st. mary's, not so fresh after however many miles on my bike. we're not obliged to be compassionate until the sixth station when veronica wipes christ's face, and my neighbors' scorn made it all the easier for me to smile across the baptismal font at the two men sitting together on the closer end of the pew at the other side of the aisle. i was sure they were a couple.

good friday liturgies tend to be tear jerkers, and the minds behind the ones at st. mary's are top notch. my lip was trembling by the fourth of the cross stations wherein jesus meets his mother. "and his humiliation was hers." crying at that point would have been a sure testament to the tenacious psychological influence of a catholic upbringing. so you resist the urge. or maybe you don't, which also makes you laugh a little because it's just another reminder that catholicism is really gay.

the kicker of today's service, however, came before the officiants started their procession around the stations. you can't make this stuff up. unless, apparently, you're a priest at st. mary's. after the only reading of the service, the priest who had been appointed to narrate the stations of the cross gave a homily of sorts, a pontification on, of all things, the failure of jesus christ. picture the sensation of "the scandal of the cross" (the priest's words, not mine). spotted: jesus of nazareth, "rejected by society, both civil and religious," walking shamefully through jerusalem to see the pharisees and then carried away, completely discredited, to the court of pontius pilate like a biblical bernie madoff on his way to the federal court of manhattan, the scapegoat for what would become history's greatest ponzi scheme: the papacy. i can't say that the performance didn't make me wonder about listening more closely for a calling to seminary. it was the least i could do to shed a tear for the priest's wild act of showmanship, if not for the suffering of the man on the cross.

and that i did. for the priest and for jesus and for mary and veronica and all the women of jerusalem. that's why i go to mass on good friday. on that day, when each year we bear witness to the events from the sentencing to the crucifixion to the laying in the tomb, the melodrama of the catholic liturgy is at its most cathartic and evocative. what's more, without the option of taking communion, there's no one to save us but ourselves. whether that results in honest self-evaluation or an investigation of the mystery of hypocrisy is for the individual to work out for himself. in either case, good friday gives catholics the ultimate gift: a chance to wail our devotion to deaf ears, the dead end, all holy opportunity of being martyred at the hand of the church itself. frustratingly, the disturbing humor of that reality is equaled by its solemnity.

it's impossible, i think, that the church lady didn't read something of that into the title of the library book that i left behind when the processional exited stage left and i packed my bag to go. a title like death in spring commands it (catholic melodrama!). and, in as much as the book can be read as an allegory for life in francoist spain, it's no stretch to interpret the rituals and sacrifices it describes as having a catholic derivation. then there are the crosses and importance that the townspeople put on the purification of the soul through torture. on top of that, rodoreda's prose reads almost like the psalms in its heavy, poetic depictions of pastoral morality. or i could be imagining things -- martyring the book to my own vain lust after death in spring. it's a strange feeling, that one, but the boy who narrates rodoreda's novel is trying to understand it as much as anyone, catholic or not. there was that. his descriptions are simple, but everything he describes could be a symbol, so i had no reservations reading the book as one. reading death in spring after playing my part in the passion, it was easy to sympathize with the boy's strained relationship with the harried townspeople and their rituals. today, good friday, it was too early in the season for the wisteria that frames so many scenes in death, but outside of st. mary's cathedral it was a beautiful day.